Pro-wrestling superstar Micke James-Aldis recently appeared on the Shining Wizards podcast to hype up the all-women’s NWA Empowerrr pay per view, Billy Corgan’s involvement in the show, and why she decided to keep herself off the card. Highlights are below.
On wrestling on NWA 73 but not Empowerrr:
“That was my decision, and I’ve gotten mixed reviews on that. A lot of people think, “oh well, you should have wrestled.” My whole thing was that I am very serious about this executive producer position. It’s very difficult to play, you know, player/coach role because I think that it skews the lines of, you know, what you’re doing versus, and it’d just kind of distract me, and I really want this Pay-Per-View to feel special and to be special. And I couldn’t see myself – I’m very focused on a lot of things, and I wouldn’t be able to focus on the show and my match with equal love, with equal passion to deliver on both platforms. And I felt like it was only fair to kind of sit back and really deliver the show how I hope to see it. So I’m going to be in gorilla, the one on the headset, the one making all the calls, and it was a lot. It’s been a lot of work just to get here. It’s been sleepless nights, and phone calls, and trying to get to the gym. Plus, I’m a mom, you know so, there’s that. That’s a full time job in itself. So it’s just a lot, and I just didn’t want to take my eyes off the prize, and I felt like the product at the end of the night delivered as a whole, that would speak volumes. And I didn’t need to wrestle, because I was already wrestling the next night and that was the cool thing of being able to still perform at the weekend, at the anniversary event, and since I was being given this platform to be able to put on this show, that then I could go and wrestle the next night for Billy (Corgan).”
Talks Billy Corgan’s involvement with the NWA:
“I would say, I definitely run things by him, because at the end of the day, it’s falling underneath the NWA umbrella, which is his brand and that’s his company. Billy and I had several conversations about this women’s brand, or this idea, or this concept before even my release or anything, because Billy has come over to the house and had dinner at my house and I’ve watched them work on the NWA, him and my husband, and everyone involved behind the scenes and been, you know, cheerleading on the sidelines this whole time. So now, to kind of come into this fold and be put in charge, I almost wanted to do something in that space anyway because it felt right for me as far as a next move for me, in a sense, but it was really kind of his idea. He’s like, “Why don’t you just do it here, and do it with the NWA and we can do it together?” and I think that’s really cool, because I’ve known Billy for twenty years at this point. It was just ironic for me; it’s crazy because I love wrestling, and I guess everything around my whole career, whenever I envisioned it, it was always with WWE, or that was the pinnacle, and I’ve always seen that and I never thought after stepping away that I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted there. But I would come back to NWA, which is the oldest wrestling organization in the United States, but also with my friend Billy who’s in music, and I do music too, and the crossovers between our paralleled universes if you will. So it’s really kind of ironic how it’s all worked out. But really good.”
On NWA Empowerrr being annual:
“We’re hoping. I’m hoping. We have definitely talked about this, especially because we’re introducing the (Women’s Invitational) Cup as an inaugural thing. The Cup will happen every single year. The whole deal is we’re going to find the top ten prospects or the top ten women that we think would make incredible NWA women’s champions and every year we’ll have this Cup. So there will be one winner, and she will always get a championship title shot at the NWA women’s champion. So, this first one will be the very next night at 73. My hope is that Empowerrr is an annual thing and we can present this Cup at every Empowerrr, and we can keep moving forward. But I do feel this is the first of many women-driven products for NWA as a whole, so I’m excited about that.”